Forget this leafy fantasy. For green living, head for Mumbai or New York. Ecotowns are a blind alley. It may be a dirty secret, but the most environmentally friendly places to live are big cities. [News Source]

Coal-burning CEO: U.S., China must fight pollution. There is a lot of rhetoric on Main Street and in our nation's Capitol these days portraying China as a job-stealing polluter whose economy is growing at the expense of the United States. [News Source]

Countdown to Copenhagen. The threat of climate change is real and imminent. Scientists from around the world have confirmed this through continuous study and observation - despite what the increasingly desperate and nonsensical arguments from deniers would have you believe. [News Source]

‘We can’t afford a much hotter planet.’ Lester Brown says his views sometimes appear extreme - because the mainstream media largely doesn't understand the urgency and challenges in avoiding catastrophic climate change. [News Source]

Schwarzenegger’s heavy-handed threat is justified. The governor has vowed to kill hundreds of bills unless lawmakers deliver a measure on water. The issue justifies the tough stance. [News Source]

Monsoons and meltdowns. Using monsoons to improve dating precision across the whole suite of paleodata, Cheng et al. show the way to the first coherent narrative that truly explains terminations and the inseparable question of what causes ice age cycles. [News Source]

Hot air fuels carbon-capture pact. CO2 might be an invisible gas, but the Alberta government is doing its best to use it as a political smokescreen. Look no further than Thursday's announcement of $865 million in taxpayers' money for Alberta's first major pilot project for carbon capture and storage. [News Source]

Gm crop pioneer now US farm science chief. US farm research is getting a shake-up with the creation of a National Institute of Food and Agriculture to fund academic agricultural research. Its director is plant scientist Roger Beachy, whose research led to the first genetically modified crop. [News Source]

Climate roulette. They say that everyone who finally gets it about climate change has an "Oh, shit" moment--an instant when the full scientific implications become clear and they suddenly realize what a horrifically dangerous situation humanity has created for itself. [News Source]

Oceans in trouble. It turns out that the oceans cannot handle all of the pollution that we heap into it, cannot handle the increasing amount of carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere. [News Source]

Hot air fuels carbon-capture pact. Politicians are making promises for the technology that scientists and the energy companies don't know they can keep. So far, in Alberta, carbon capture and storage has managed to generate plenty of political hot air--if only there was some way to sequester that. [News Source]